To be a stone

Rolling River God

Little Stones are smooth

Only once the water passes through

So I am a stone

rough and grainy still

Trying to reconcile this river's chill

CHORUS:

But when I close my eyes

and feel you rushing by

I know that time brings change

and change takes time

And when the sunset comes

my prayer would be just this one

that you might pick me up

and notice that I am

just a little smoother in your hand

Sometimes raging wild

sometimes swollen high

never have I known this river dry

The deepest part of you

is where I want to stay

and feel the sharpest edges wash away

CHORUS

This song has been like a balm on my soul and in my life the last couple weeks. It has been on repeat and I'm sure I've listened to it over 100 times. There is something so majestic about the visual that comes to mind through these lyrics. To be so lost in my God, hidden in the deepest part of His being, until He has smoothed out all the jagged and rough edges of who I am, is so beautiful to my soul. My heart beats and aches to be like this. To be the smallest stone, the tiniest pebble, but the one worn and polished by His waters until, when He reaches out to choose a stone to use, it is I that He picks up. It is I that is released from His hand with the perfect precision and accuracy. The precision and accuracy that blazes out and like a sure shot, accomplishes that which I am to accomplish for His glory.

This will not happen without time. Though He is not bound by the time of this world, He uses the time I am bound to and in His heavenly time, He creates the smoothest of edges. Ah, but the waiting it takes for this to happen. So often, I've found myself begging the Lord to allow me to become, or do, or go, when I want it to happen. "Today, Father! Let it be/happen today!" I find this is the cry of my heart so very often. Yet, in His patience and love, He has and is asking me to wait for certain things, until it is His perfect timing. When I look back over past waiting seasons in my life, when I can see what the end results are and now that it has ended, what was accomplished, I am always so thankful for the waiting. Looking back, all the waiting was so worth it and now that those periods of waiting are over, I can clearly see what a gift they were. I can see how, though I may have felt worn down by rushing waters, or that I was stuck at the bottom of the river with the water rushing over and above me, it was at these times I was being worn smooth, to shine with His brilliance. For I have nothing of light in me if He is not there and what a witness it is of who He is, when others see a reflection of Jesus in the worn and shining pebbles that we are and can be. To be the one willing to be worn, to be the one who cries out for God to smooth the sharpest edges away, this is painful. Oh, but the beauty to be allowed to close my eyes and feel the great river rushing around me, to know that I am lost in Him becoming what I was made to be, this is worth everything. For I do not want to be an ugly little stone, worthless with jagged edges, I want to be His smooth stone, held in the mighty right hand of my precious and beautiful God. Take me, Father, and make me smooth in all that you are so that giants fall when you send me forth from Your sling.

"He took his stick in his hand and chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in the shepherd's bag which he had, even in his pouch, and his sling was in his hand; and he approached the Philistine...And David put his hand into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead. And the stone sank into his forehead, so that he fell on his face to the ground."

1 Samuel 17:40,49